Prepping for a First Birthday Party

Planning for a birthday party can be a bit overwhelming, you want to make it somewhat special, but your kid isn’t going to remember it. I think the first birthday party is more for the parents. You have successfully kept a tiny human alive for one year, time to celebrate!

I thought it would be helpful and fun to share with you how we came up with the theme for Meghan’s party. For those who are going to be planning one or are just curious.

First things first, make a guest list and send out an invite. This is important because then you will know how many people will fill your house and how much food to get. Once the invites are sent, pick a theme. We knew our theme when making the invites, so we were able to incorporate it into the design.

For Meghan’s first birthday, I always knew I wanted to do a “British” theme. If it wasn’t totally obvious, Meghan is named after Meghan Markle. Long before she was the Duchess of Sussex, I admired her heart for empowering women and a timeless sense of style. I wanted my daughters to be named after strong female role models and Meghan won the name game when she came along. All of that being said, since she is now the Duchess of Sussex, I thought a royal theme for Meghan would be perfect. But not princess, since Meghan Markle is not a princess, as Myke makes very clear, over and over again. “The girls can be anything they want to be when they grow up, except a princess, because I’m not a king :)”.

Then Myke made a trip to the store, and then another trip, and finally one last one on the day, to pick up the cake. We decided to do treats and tea sandwiches. I got to live out a dream and make cookies and cake donuts for my kid’s birthday (hopefully more to come). We bought little scones and a cake. We made a smash cake but it looked like it was smashed before Meghan even got to it. Meghan liked it and that was all that mattered.

We ventured to Party City to get nice plastic wear. we went for more of a royal afternoon of tea for our little duchess. We got plastic champagne flutes for our party punch (we make it for every party we throw) and some nice plates and napkins. We used my own China for most of the drinkware and serving plates/platters, which I loved. Next is my favorite part, decorations!

I’m really big on using what I have and since I’m a big British fan anyway, I had a fair amount of items. I used the souvenirs that my sister bought for me and my mom when she went to London for the Duke and Duchess wedding last year. Plus a book she got the girls about London, which is so fun to flip through. My incredible mother in law came through with her teapots to help keep the tea party theme alive and they did not disappoint. My go-to decoration for my girls first birthdays (and classic tradition) is the photo a month display. It’s always fun for us to put it together and look back on when they were a month old. Now that we have both, we compared each one per month over the last couple of years.

The day arrived and we had more than enough sandwiches, an overflow or party punch, and plenty of treats for everyone. The weather was great, a little chilly, but good enough to be outside for a bit. Just when it was starting to turn cold, we scrambled inside and got warm.